In a major breakthrough, Ahmedabad police on Monday unravelled a well-planned conspiracy of eliminating key witnesses in the rape cases against self-styled godman Asaram Bapu and his son Narayan Sai with the arrest of a couple.
Talking to reporters Ahmedabad police commissioner Shivanand Jha said a special team of crime branch sleuths nabbed the duo, Basava Rao alias Vasu of Bijapur in Karnataka, and Sejal Prajapati of Daman, who posed as husband and wife to plan and kill key witnesses, so that the case against Asaram and Narayan Sai would weaken and they could get out on bail from jail.
In order to eliminate key witnesses, the conspiracy was hatched by 17 close aides of Asaram in 2013. The supporters of Asaram worked out the plan to eliminate the key witnesses and gave the contract of executing the plan to Basava Rao. They also gave him a list of six key witnesses. With a view to gain confidence of the witnesses, Rao and Prajapati stayed together in a rented house in Surat posing as husband and wife.
Pravin Vakil, a close confidante of Asaram used to give money to Basava Rao to engage contract killers to carry out the executions of the six witnesses. Interestingly, during the years 2013 and 2014 all the six witnesses were attacked with gun, knife and iron rods in Ahmedabad, Surat, Rajkot and Muzaffarnagar.
“With the arrest of Rao and Prajapati duo, police would get some clues to find out contract killers of other key witnesses in Asaram and Narayan Sai cases,” said a senior police officer.